


Ante Bellum

by lambient



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Boarding School, F/M, Professor Riddle, because like teacher tom is hot, this is garbage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-15 11:10:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15411600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lambient/pseuds/lambient
Summary: 1842 LondonHermione Granger plain, and penniless is taken in by a wealthy Minerva McGonagall in search of an heir, after the death of her parents is sent to a prestigious finishing school in which not everything is entirely as it seems. Starting with Professor Riddle and his cloudy grey eyes that know far more than he’s letting on.





	1. In Which Hermione Gets Out

**Author's Note:**

> Yo, so I am not much of a writer anymore, but I am inspired and I figured I might as well start another story while it lasts. And if weŕe being honest I probably won´t finish this. And it´ll be like totally okay because like no oneś going to read this anyways. But if you happen to, thank you and enjoy. My inspiration is totally fueled by this wonderful story Renatus by frozenbeans, itś so amazing and like I can´t. Also I am reading this book series called A Great and Terrible Beauty so there is some influence there. 
> 
> Also a disclaimer Hermione might be super ooc, no she definitely is ooc, and it might like a little dark!Hermione so that´s fun and like so will Tom Riddle because I don´t really know what I am doing and yeah this might just be an au because I don´t know anything about magic and I don´t very well care to research it. So welcome to my story!
> 
> Also I don´t own Harry Potter, that all belongs to J.K. Rowling and what not. 
> 
> Bri

Hermione Granger cared very much for the opinion of others, even if she didn´t show it, even if she wore her hair in a twist so tight her face looked pinched, because Hermione Granger may have been smart, and the most logical girl in her town but, she was above all, a lady. And even though her clothes were often worn and dirty and she read more than any girl this town - or even maybe this world - she was poor. And there wasn´t much more you needed to know about anyone in this day and age other than how much money they inherited.

Born to people who loved each other and made a living doing hard work, but work that didn´t pay much, born in a town in which nothing ever changes. People don´t live comfortably unless they were born into it, and even then they rarely ever go up. In her mothers case, she was born to a middle class family, rather well off and fell in love with a boy stationed below her. Cut off by her family because they would rather be heirless than let her disgrace their good name.

Hermione couldn´t ever imagine giving up a life of luxury in the name of love, and maybe becuase she was young, and she´d never been in love but she couldn´t very well see what was so great about it. Not when, when you got married you were signing your life away, to become property of a man. Hermione couldn´t think of anything worse, she would never be anybodies property, if she were to ever get married she would be her husbands equal. If he didn´t see her that way then she very well wouldn´t get married.

And it wasn´t like she was very attractive anyways, what qualities most men found handsome had been lost on her. Instead of being womanly she was tall and narrow, partially due to her unhealthy diet, and partially due to bad genetics. Not one man found a tall woman attractive, and even then she had horridly bushy hair, so even if she longed to get married - which she most certainly did not, thank you very much - itś not like she´d have very many options.

\--

Cholera was a disease Hermione was not immune to, and neither were her parents. A family had infected her street and then it spread like wildfire, the sick becoming sicker and Hermione was helpless to watch.  
\--  
Minerva McGonagall was an imposing woman, she stood tall and regal her hair tight but her face not pinched at all, her eyes were cold, just like her voice. Unforgiving, and the picture of grace, and elegance. To the best of Hermioneś knowledge she was not widowed, just unmarried. A great heiress in her own right, one who needent be dependant on a man and oh how jealous Hermione was.

Ms. McGonagall was here on a trip visiting her sisterś family, or so Hermione had heard from the greasy woman who gossiped, she wasn´t meant to stay long.

Hermione had yet to see her in person, and being only twelve, dirty, and soon to be orphaned - not that she´d ever admit it - she doubted anyone so pristine and classy would ever indulge her corner of the town. No matter how hard twelve year olds wished. She wasn´t royalty but she very well could have been.

\--  
Minerva McGonagall did not wish to stay at West Point long, she didn´t find it particularly lacking for all intents and purposes, but it was dirty and there were more poor people than she had been accustomed to. Her sister was sweet but she had no mind of her own, spoke only when allowed, and her children were very mannered but very spoiled. Spoiled so rotten Minerva could hardly bare their presence.

She was due to head back home to London rather soon, but having been in West Point for such a short amount of time she took to wandering the streets. Going for brisks walks during the day, regretting it when she´d come across another poverty stricken neighborhood, clouded with disease.

How disgusting it was, and she wanted no part of it, nor did her expensive gowns had any place in it. Today she´d wandered across a particularly disgusting neighborhood, Iĺl have to burn my dress, she thought morbidly. How horrid this place was, with the smell of rotting flesh thick in the air, clinging to any vecsel of life it could find.

And it would have been scandalous for her to wander the streets alone should she not have been a spinster. Nor was she afraid of what the people said of her, Minerva knew who she was and knew what was important. Nevermind the townspeople often called her a witch, it was her money that kept the town running and they did well to remember that.

She´s planning on turning around and heading back to her sisters home to prepare for dinner and then her long journey back home to London when she hears a desperate wailing that you´d have to be deaf to have ignored. Curiosity was a horribly ugly trait on a woman, but she didn´t very well care and decided to go picking about. Hoping not to find a burglary, how bloody those could get. But it´d hardly matter if she had to burn her dress anyways.

The wailing doesn´t stop, it pierces the air, and hangs heavy. Almost as if it belongs in such a dreary disgusting place, it belongs to a child, Minerva can tell. She was a firm believer that a child should be seen and not heard. She always imagined even the poor taught their children manners. She must have been wrong.

She stops at an alleyway, in wish she sees a small child, thin, no doubt from her lack of food, hovering over two bodies. Dead bodies. They must have been her parents, how unfortunate, McGonagall thought. To find someone dead, even worse when you love them.

¨Are those your parents?¨ Minerva feels herself let the question slip from her lips without thinking, the small child jumps back, out of fear her lips trembling. Her face covered in dirt and sweat, her hair falling out of the hastily made bun. Her clothes torn, her face pale, if only she hadn´t been born into such a low position in society. She holds an air of dignity and intelligence that could almost be aristocratic.

More´s the pity that she was so lowly ranked in society.

¨Yes they are, and you are Minerva McGonagall.¨ She states plainly, her eyes brown and clouded with grief. She is forgetting her manners but it should hardly matter to Hermione Granger, because her parents are dead and she is meeting Ms. McGonagall in an alley. Wishing out of everything it would have at least been on the street in the daylight on a day she could have made herself look presentable. Because how it hurt her pride to be face to face with someone so clean knowing you hadn´t had access to good bath water in weeks.

¨I see my reputation precedes me." She states blandly not at all caring for the girls manner. What unfortunate circumstances, but it didn´t give her a right to be so rude, and to her superior no doubt.

 

¨Excuse me, but I am not in a particularly jovial mood." She interjects her voice crude, and her eyes fierce. Why Hermione was being so cross with someone she once longed to see, she had no idea. Perhaps it had been because she had been walking with her parents when they couldn´t continue. And how horrible it got all at once, and it´s not as if it came completely out of nowhere, but Hermione refused to believe it could be her parents. Even after Pansy Parkinson´s mother had died.

Refused to believe because even if it was true, and even if she didn´t have a particular attachment to her parents and her lifestyle, she was only twelve. Not even a woman and now she would be on her own, completely. What would they do with her, she´d become a ward of the state no doubt, forced in an orphanage. She couldn´t quite picture herself in an orphanage.

¨Do you speak to everyone this way girl, it´s a wonder you haven´t been properly educated." Minerva glowers, and she´s not even mad at her anymore. Because it´s very clear this little girl is horrid and rude and Minerva has not time for rude little girls with no manners, but something about her intrigues Minerva. And she is looking for an heir and it´s very clear she won´t be having any children of her own and why not? Why should she choose a perfect neat little girl with a bow in her hair when she could choose  _this_. 

And yes, she would need a lot of work, and who´s to say she´d even wish to go with her. And how odd it would be too, when they´d ask where Minerva had located her. What would she say?  _Oh it´s quite a fun story, I was wandering about a disease stricken neighborhood when I found this tiny child mourning her late parents, and I knew then and there this would be the one._

¨There´s not exactly any schools around here, now is there?¨ Hermione shot back irritated, and worried, what would she do? What could she do? Nothing, she was properly helpless and at the mercy of a woman she was dreadfully rude to. And how mortified Hermione would have been if she wasn´t so hot headed and out raged, if she knew how to control her temper. But as level headed and logical as she had always been her temper was not something she had learned to easily control. 

¨Right, well, I don´t suppose you have any other family.¨

¨No, ma´am.¨ Hermione whispered, her voice no longer holding the same fire, her gaze down cast as if to repent. She shouldn´t have been so rude, this was a tragedy, yes. But she was a lady, and ladies never behaved so horridly. 

¨Good, I see you do know some manners. Very well then, as I see it you have very little options. I am in search of an heir.¨ McGonagall starts and Hermione´s eyes go wide, she couldn´t mean to take her as her heir. How bizarre, how completely inappropriate. She was newly orphaned and not at all civil, she was a nasty little girl and how could Minerva think to take her into her care. Either way, Hermione should hardly like to object. She refused to get hopes up, in case this was all some nasty prank. 

  
  
¨And you mean to make me your heir?¨ She questions curiously.

¨You´d need a lot of work, and we´d have to train you privately before we sent you to an actual boarding school. I won´t have you disgracing my name, and should you fail to completely master the art of dignity, grace, and beauty you can kiss any good life behind. I will not introduce you into society as you are now.¨ She says sternly but her voice filled with possibility, as she talks about a future that hasn´t happened yet. And how exciting Hermione thinks, if only her parents hadn´t just croaked. What a horrible damper on her mood. 

  
She knew it was horrible to make fun so, and that little girls that were naughty would go to hell but she could hardly care. They were her parents, and yes they gave her life but they gave her a horrible life. A poverty stricken life and here was a way out, Hermione could mourn her parents later, when she had a new dress everyday. Now she needed to get out, or she doubted she ever could. 


	2. In Which Hermione Get´s a Bath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I really didn´t expect anyone to have read my story, like at all. Because it´s horrible and I wrote it within an hour and then went to bed, like I am actually embarrassed because I did not edit it and like what even is the plot right now??? 
> 
> Also basically this story is in Third Person Omniscient because I don´t how to do anything right and so yeah. 
> 
> However, I digress, thank you for reading this chapter. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any characters in this universe what so ever, it all belongs to J.K. Rowling.

Minerva McGonagall is a stubborn sort of woman, Hermione decides. When she puts her mind to something so fully she can not be stopped, not even when the shrill voice of her sister declares a filthy little rat has no place in her home, not when she very well could be a thief. Not when she very well has two children to think about. 

Hermione expects Minerva to change her mind at this, to realize she had been foolish, but she doesn´t. She stands her ground exceedingly well, and never the type to push herself onto someone, let alone her own sister decides to gather her things. It is very clear she will be spending her last night in West Point somewhere else. And good riddance Hermione thinks, because how the two could be related is beyond her. Where Minerva is calm and calculating her sister is hysterical and haughty. An air about her that Hermione doesn´t quite care for. 

And truth be told Hermione didn´t quite care for a great many things. 

It doesn´t take Hermione long to push Mrs. Withers - Minerva´s sister - out of her mind, not when there is food, and warmth, and a bath with water that is clean and not for anyone else. For her, and Hermione usually isn´t one to get sentimental but she finds tears welling up in her eyes at the sight. 

She´s in the nicest room she´s ever seen and it´s not even Ms. McGonagall´s house, it´s an inn she made reservations with at a very short notice. But it´s fine, and clean, and so much more than Hermione could have prepared for. 

The curtains are luxurious and she´s never seen anything quite so fancy in her life. 

Minerva doesn´t ask why she´s crying when she brings in a night gown pure and white, just for her. She doesn´t care for children, and doesn´t much care for their carrying on. But she very well isn´t going to question the young girl on it, not when her parents just died. Not when everything´s so new and bizarre. 

Minerva knew that this was quite an odd turn of events, and that this all could blow up in her face. And the girl could be a thief, and how crude she had been. Who could make a lady of that? However, she didn´t much care for the risks. After all she wasn´t getting any younger and she has had very little to live for these days. Her sister may have settled for a perfectly boring life in a perfectly nice house, but not Minerva. 

This kind of things happens all for the time, she decides, and that there is no reason for her to worry. Not when men bring on heirs, or childless women bring girls into their care plenty a times. Why should it be so odd that she does too? And yes, the circumstances are less than ideal. And yes, she was in no position to raise an orphan, but what´s done is done. 

 

It grows awfully lonely in her big house, and who´s to say a child wouldn´t liven the place up. Not that Minerva was particularly lacking in company, not when she had a very opinionated neighbor who didn´t know when to stop talking, especially after tea. So, Minerva was never really lacking for company, which made it even harder to justify her actions. 

Truth be told she might have even felt sorry for her, sorry that she had just lost her parents and that she was poor and ugly and thin, but would never even have a chance. Not when she was born into the wrong circumstances. And that´s what it was, Minerva decided. 

And it wasn´t any of Minerva´s business to be honest, that´s for sure. What´s it matter to her if one child is orphaned? She was old money, born into it with the right circumstances and learned to increase her fortune with even better ones. But truth be told she was never like her sister, who knew where she fit in and had unwavering self-confidence. That knew irrevocably that she was better, and that she owed nobody anything. 

Minerva could not sit idly by and watch, however. She could hold her tongue when men talked about her like she wasn´t even there, she could hold her tongue, and she could be a lady when she needed to be. When there was no room left for her to be anything else, because that´s how she had been raised. But not this, not when she could actually do something. When she had the power and the means, and the will. 

\-- 

Tonight, Hermione prays for her parents. Her parents that tried so hard but weren´t enough, couldn´t ever be enough. Not when they never even had a chance, when every kiss goodnight and every vow that tomorrow would be better, had to be better were promises they had no way of keeping. Their hope, and determination hadn´t been enough, 

Hermione prays for them, prays for them because no one else will. 

\-- 

Minerva doesn´t talk to Hermione until the next morning, and it´s partially because she doesn´t know what to say and partially because she wants to give the child a chance to grieve. Her parents were still alive, and therefore she would refrain from the usual haughty input that had been bred into her. 

¨I trust you slept well?" Minerva starts off, cold in a way she doesn´t mean it to be. Or not cold, just indifferent. Lacking, if you will. 

¨Quite.¨ Hermione says, but she knows it isn´t a question. She knows to tell her the truth would be an insult to Ms. McGonagall, when she had went through all of this trouble. For her. But ladies did not lie. 

¨I know this is all rather odd. I am sorry the clothes don´t fit quite right, they were all I could find at such short notice.¨ Minerva says, and Hermione glances down at her clothes. She knows Ms. McGonagall is not really sorry, she has no real reason to be. She´s done more than she probably should have. However, it´s quite a step up to her worn old dress, but they are still the clothes of a servant. And who can be happy with that? 

 

¨No worries, ma´am. I appreciate them all the same.¨ Hermione is outright lying now. Or well, just lying more. 

¨We will be returning to my home in London this afternoon. From there we can work out better clothing arrangements. I can´t have you representing me looking like this." She states calmly, her words harsh even if she doesn´t mean them to be. 

Hermione is once again reminded of how plain she is, how not even plain but just ugly. With her buck teeth and her bushy hair. Hair that´s grown coarse and mangled over the years due to lack of attention. She looks down at the hardly touched plate of food in front of her. How she longs to eat but how sick she feels. 

¨Of course not, I would never wish to dishonor you.¨ Hermione chokes out, her face going red. She feels tears prick at her eyes and she wills them to go away, swallows hard. Her throat feels almost like it´s closing up and for all she knew it very well could be. And for all she knew this could be how she´s go, dead without a warning, without a chance to prove she could have been different. 

Minerva doesn´t notice however, doesn´t notice how her voice wavers or how Hermione looks at her. A cross between envy, and hatred. And she doesn´t very well care if Hermione likes her. She doesn´t have to like her. 

¨Once we get your clothes arranged then we can work on your hair. It´s ghastly. We can tie it back for now but something must be done.¨ She says plainly before taking a bite of her breakfast. She is calm in the way you expect an ocean to be right before a storm, flat and never ending. But any moment the peace could be disrupted. 

¨Pardon my asking, I don´t want you to think I am ungrateful for surely you know I couldn´t be, but why? Why take me in?¨ Hermione asks, she isn´t usually this impulsive but this question had been eating away at her since last night. Burning. 

¨If you think you might sound ungrateful it´s because you do, now do well and mind your manners.¨ Minerva says harshly, and she feels no remorse when Hermione recoils. She owes this child nothing, so why should she spare her feelings. Learning to be dignified and graceful will not be easy, it´s best she learns that now. 

\-- 

Hermione is in London, actual London. And never mind that´s it´s damp and grey and everyone looks miserable and there is no room for anyone and it´s hard for her to breath and there are shops and buildings and carriages everywhere. And never mind that Minerva McGonagall spent the entire carriage ride ridiculing her and pointing out things to fix. All that matters is that she´s in London. 

Not even Pansy Parkinson with her pretty dresses and her expensive bows and her dad´s store and her happiness had ever been to London. Hermione knows it is wrong to boast, and to be prideful, but this is the first time she´s had something Pansy Parkinson hasn´t. She tries to feel bad, tries to feel compassion for Pansy, after all her mother hadn´t gotten sick just like Hermione´s parents had. Faded away just as her´s had but she can feel nothing. Not a single ounce of compassion as ladies should. Even for their enemies. 

But Hermione can not forgive her for how horrid she was. No lady, however caring could forgive such a horrible wrench Hermione decides. 

\-- 

If Hermione though the inn had been something to marvel at she was not prepared for the actuality that was Ms. McGonagall´s house. Or I guess now, her house. There was a great big stone wall and a garden with more flowers than Hermione had ever seen in her life. With colors she had not known even existed. 

The house itself was more of a castle. Hermione was lost in it all, in all the glass windows and curtains and gargoyles. And for the first time she feels the reality of her situation kick in. 

Gone with her one room house, if you could call it that, gone with reading the same book every day, gone with her nasty clothes, and her hunger. Her hunger that made it hard for her to think, and how horrid it was when her hunger pangs finally became too much to bear and not even reading could help. 

Hermione will miss her parents, she´ll miss them bitterly, cry for them when it all becomes too much and their faces are burned into her. But they would want this for her, she decides. They would want her to get a chance at a proper education and a proper life. So, she decides no matter how horrible Ms. McGonagall´s ridicules become, she will not give up. Not when it´s clear she wasn´t meant for this life, cut from a different sort of cloth. Because her parents would have wanted this for her, wanted it so desperately. Would have paid any price, it´s unfortunate however, that it had to have been their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this, if you made it this far that is. I plan on updating again by the 31st because Harry´s birthday and what not, ( even though Harry isn´t really in it yet) and I am sure everyone´s like uhm no we don´t want this but yeah. Be prepared.
> 
> Also fun fact my birthday is also the 31st!! Same day as Harry Potter, and I LOVE Harry Potter so it´s like literally fate!!


End file.
